query re AAVE

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>stanford student doug kenter reports to me a black rapper (from NYC)
>who at least sometimes has /k/ for word-final /t/, as in "vomick" for
>"vomit" and "run ick" for "run it".  this was news to both john
>rickford and me.  i eventually devised a hypothesis about how you
>might get there from here: lots of speakers not only glottalize word-
>final voiceless stops, but also sometimes neutralize word-final [t']
>and [k'] to a glottal stop; someone hearing the glottal stop has to
>figure out how to "restore" the point of articulation, and could
>easily get it wrong sometimes.  (i'm ruling out the possibility of
>some substratum effect from hawaiian or a similar language with /t/
>and /k/ both mapped onto [k].  first, because it seems so socially
>unlikely in this case, and second, because the effect is only in word-
>final position, not across the board.)

"Vomick" is surely familiar; I presume it will appear in DARE. I don't
think it's at all restricted to AAVE. I don't know how this pronunciation
began; maybe it's an old alternative like "ax" for "ask"?

-- Doug Wilson


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